La Guineta d’Agneu – Tavascan, via Estaon

A pale morning dawned on the deep valley. Today’s mission was two day stretches in one, the first of which involved a monstrous climb and descent that would take half a day at least. Guineta lay deep in a valley and I scrambled out of camp while the sun was still behind the mountains. I had one week left to hike before meeting my mom in Barcelona for some snazzy R&R on the beach. The high alpine crossing into Andorra lay ahead. I was determined to enjoy everything the trail had left to offer.

My knees and lower legs were increasingly hurting. I was keeping it in check with Ibuprofen, a common hiker tactic, but that can only take you so far when what you need is good old-fashioned rest. I hadn’t had a rest day in 10 days while smashing out double stretches almost every single one of those days. When you thru-hike there is normal pain and worrisome pain, the latter encompassing anything that’s either new or escalating. Parts of my body were definitely starting to ache earlier and earlier in the day. I’d always had a deep fear of anything achilles-related and my leg pain worried me – not least in light of the upcoming three days of more double stretches and the standard severe altitude profiles of the Pyrenees (fuelled by junk snacks).

The morning climb took forever. There was no trail and I scrambled upwards guided by my map app through endless burnt-to-crisp fields and past a tiny hamlet. Field turned to pine forest, merciful cover from the blazing sun. But still the trail climbed until I felt I had done Kilimanjaro twice over. The top col was nothing more than a forest-clad patch before the trail swooped down again on the other side onto more toasted yellow grass.  

Entering the old stone village of Estaon, I tried following the striped markers through the narrow streets until I came to a small courtyard. Two dogs leaped through a set of thick drapes covering a doorway and growled at me.

-        “Oi there! Shut up you beasts!” A plump woman with an Aussie twanged accent stuck her head out through the drapes. “Heya! You a hiker? Wanna come in for a beer? Don’t put you pack down or the dogs will piss on it.”

And thus I sank into my first blissful trail magic experience on the GR11. The resident couple’s names were Clive and Carmen. Carmen was born in the village, Clive was a ski bum from Australia. In addition to their two dogs, they had nine kitties and countless recommendations for things to do in Barcelona. I sat there for nearly an hour while they fed me crisps (that I tried to not vacuum up like the savage I was) and beer. Theirs felt like a true Aussie home. I would have loved to have someone like them as adoptive aunts and uncles back home. They sent me on my way into a blistering afternoon for my second stretch of the day, another climb/col/descent.

Accompanying me on my walk through the sun-dappled forest was thousands upon thousands of butterflies. Mahogany with red wing rims, pearly blue and white like those of Western Aragon, amber and yellow. It was a wonder to walk among them through the trees alongside the river. At one point the air was so thick with them I had to breathe through my nose lest I swallow some. Natural trail magic to follow on from Anthropocene trail magic.

I climbed the giant hill outside Estaon in the blazing afternoon sunshine. No wonder the stretches were divided as they did, doing full doubles inevitably had you hiking during the worst part of the day. Tall golden grass and rubbery green plants swiped at my sore legs as I dragged myself past blackened hut ruins as the forest disappeared below.

The first sight to greet me atop the lush green col was a pair of very pink boobs. Two sunburned Dutch women sat side by side in naught but their shorts. I decided in a split second that ignoring them would have been more awkward than making enthusiastic conversation, and so I stood there trying to pointedly stare at their faces and nothing else. They told me that they too had recently been victims of a bout of gastro. I felt like I belonged to an increasingly exclusive minority that hadn’t gotten sick yet. Long live the water filter.

While I was (don’t pardon my French) dead as shit and royally fried, the undisputed highlight of the day was the escarpment track of the final few km. A 60 cm wide rock trail hugged the vertical mountain wall over 200m above the valley floor. The village of Tavascan lay nestled like an oasis at the bottom, crowned by a tall church spire at the head of a glittering lake. As I veered down onto the narrow stone street, I was done. Dead and done. I nearly fell into the Casa Rural as camping was illegal as usual and I needed to be horizontal now. Fucking Brian. Him being wrong about the availability of camping spots was getting very, very old. I missed my tent after having spent so many nights in refuges. The room was miniscule and barely fit a single bed, a small sink, and my backpack. I lowered my dirty corpse onto the bed and rubbed the salt crusts off my eyelids. The heat rash in my armpits was getting severe. My nasal walls bled perpetually in the dry mountain climate, and the inside of my nose was covered in disgusting scabs. I had officially entered that stage of hikertrash-ness where no amount of showering leaves you feeling any less gross.

Down in the only village hotel restaurant, I persuaded the chef to feed me even though I wasn’t booked in. I spent my lomo-and-fries dinner making stuttering conversation with a very lovely Catalan hotel employee while we eavesdropped on the conversation of three British guys at the table next to us who were hiking the Haute Route Pyrenees. “I just can’t stand it when girls get clingy, I’m independent and wanna do my own thing”. Shudder. Literally every emotionally intelligent woman’s worst nightmare man. When they eventually turned their attention to us, they turned out to possess a treasure chest of hiker banter. They’d met lots more people than I had and had given them all trail names. I cracked up at the story of the obsessive ultralight man, who despite his every effort to save weight was wearing pants instead of not shorts – they had named him El Pantalón (The Pants).